


give me your fire, give me your fear

by procrastinatingbookworm



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Banishment (Hollow Knight), Betrayal, Child Death, Chronic Illness, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Memory Loss, Mutual Pining, Unresolved Romantic Tension, headcanons galore, oh uh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27814651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: Brumm makes a choice. Everyone regrets this.
Relationships: Brumm & Grimm (Hollow Knight), Brumm & The Knight (Hollow Knight), Brumm/Grimm (Hollow Knight)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 43





	give me your fire, give me your fear

Brumm waits.

If his Master was awake, he would probably be starting to wonder where Brumm was. They aren’t often apart, even when the Troupe has set up camp.

But Grimm is asleep, awaiting the Ritual’s completion. He doesn’t know that Brumm is gone. He doesn’t know what he’s planning.

Brumm prods at the lit brazier of the Nightmare Lantern with the end of his staff, as though it is a mortal fire in need of tending. The sparks dance upward in response, close enough to catch them in his palms, like the snowflakes that sometimes fell in the colder kingdoms they visited.

He could, if he wanted to. They wouldn’t burn him. Not him, not any of the Troupe. The sparks, even the flames by Brumm’s feet, flickering through the lattice of the brazier, are harmless as a gentle rain, pleasantly warm to the touch. 

The Nightmare Heart is a fickle, fitful thing. Even Grimm, Troupe Master and Heart’s Vessel, lives forever on the knife-edge of being devoured.

But the Heart is possessive, too. It is loath to relinquish what it owns. It does not harm them when it has a choice.

Brumm twists the staff at the brazier’s base. Sparks fly up. They land in Brumm’s fur, on his face, on his arms.

He wonders if the Heart knows his intentions.

No, likely not. It would burn him if it did.

The summoner enters unobtrusively, silent as they always are. The child hovers over their shoulder, mewling softly. 

Brumm wonders what will happen to the child, if the summoner goes through with banishing the Troupe.

No, he doesn’t wonder. He knows. The child will die.

Brumm’s heart aches.

The summoner stops beside the lantern. Their pale mask reflects red as they look up at Brumm.

“So you followed me here, to where the ritual began,” Brumm says, surprised by the strength of his voice. “You would join me in breaking it, then?”

The summoner remains quiet, but they do not move, holding Brumm’s gaze.

“It is painful to defy the Master,” Brumm admits. He lets his free hand flutter to his chest, where the ache is building. “But our harvest... it profanes this dark, quiet Kingdom. This once, I would see the Ritual fail.”

If the thoughts were painful, to speak it is agonizing. Brumm presses down on his chest, as though he can hold his heart still. His eyes are hot behind his mask.

“Let us destroy the anchor, and banish the Master.” 

Brumm curls his hands around his staff, lifting it up. He feels as though he’s giving a eulogy. “Never shall he return here again.”

He drives the staff downward and _twists_.

The brazier breaks.

For a moment, that is all.

Then the summoner draws their nail and strikes.

Metal clangs against metal, and the Nightmare Lantern roars up, red flames licking at Brumm’s arms, like grasping hands.

(They still don’t burn him. They tug at his fur and scream in the back of his head, but his carapace goes unscathed.)

The brazier shatters.

Brumm chokes on his breath. His vision blurs at the edges, spears of light shooting across his view.

The summoner falls to their hands and knees, then onto their front, nail clattering away.

Brumm lets go of his staff. It sticks upright in the remains of the brazier, like a grave marker.

He means to kneel at the summoner’s side, to reach out and lift them in his hands.

The world goes searing white before he can take a single step.

When Brumm opens his eyes, he stands before the drawn curtains of his Master’s nest. 

He isn’t sure, for a moment, whether he’s awake or in the Nightmare Realm, until the acrid smell of burning hits the back of his throat.

The Heart is quiet, Brumm realizes. That’s what’s throwing him off. It’s still beating—Brumm can feel the echoes vibrating in his chest—but it’s nowhere near as loud as usual.

Nowhere near as loud as it would be, were the Ritual still imminent.

Brumm runs a hand across the heavy velvet curtains, winding his fingers into the fabric, unsure if he should enter. Grimm will be angry with him; there’s no doubt of that. _How_ angry, though, is a point of concern.

Then, from behind the curtains, Grimm starts to cough.

It’s a sickly noise, wracked and choking, interspersed with thin, desperate breaths.

Brumm sweeps the curtains aside and goes to him.

The last time Brumm was here—or in the real world’s version of this place—Grimm was asleep, hanging upside-down above the nest, wrapped in his wings.

Now, he sits among the nest’s pillows and blankets, as he does when the Ritual isn’t upon him, hunched in on himself and coughing desperately, blood spattering his hands. He isn’t wearing his chest brace, and his grey carapace is starkly colorless against the saturated hues of the nest.

 _No wonder he’s coughing,_ Brumm thinks, when his gaze lands on the discarded brace, and then the guilt crushes back into his chest, squeezing his heart so tightly that it feels like he’s the one with choking.

Grimm coughs and coughs, even when Brumm kneels at his side holds him upright to clear his airway. His chest rattles with every breath, and blood drips from the corners of his mouth, thick and staining.

Brumm’s never met another bug with red haemolymph, but he supposes that Grimm’s always had a penchant for theming.

When Grimm stops coughing, he slumps into Brumm’s arms. His quavering, sticky breaths make Brumm’s fur flutter.

It’s quiet, for a while, and Brumm can almost pretend that nothing—nothing more than his Master’s slow, perpetual death, at least—is wrong. 

Then Grimm sits up. He lets Brumm help him back into his brace, wipes the blood from his hands and mouth,

“Thank you, Brumm,” he says, tonelessly. His voice sounds _wrong_. Cracked to the point of breaking, but not with the dry rasp of coughing, or even the thickness of blood. Instead, his words are sticky, as though he’s been treating his wheezing with honey.

“Mrrm,” Brumm manages, through the tightness in his throat. “Sorry, Master.”

Grimm sighs. The air whistles coming out, crackling in his throat. “I’m no longer your Master, so you ought to use my name.”

“I wish to stay,” Brumm says, without thinking. “I did this for you.”

“Brumm,” Grimm sighs. finally turning to look at him. “My sweet musician.”

He doesn’t look accusing, or angry. He just looks sad.

Brumm wishes he could disappear.

“This place used to be my home,” Grimm says, quietly. His voice drips with melancholy. “Or as much a home as a wanderer such as I can have.”

Brumm feels ill. He curls his hands into his fur, tugging rhythmically. He wishes for his accordion, but he left it behind in the real version of this tent.

“My other half, my Soul and Light, made her nest here,” Grimm goes on, in that awful, croaking voice. “Before the Wyrm and Root devoured this place, it was hers. And where she went, I did as well.”

“I’m sorry—” Brumm starts, nearly choking on it, but Grimm lifts a hand to quiet him.

“You made a choice. I will never fault you for that. I am simply… contextualizing. So you understand my… reaction.”

So he _is_ angry. That’s… comforting, in a sense. Brumm knows what to expect from anger.

“You have not met her,” Grimm continues. “Because by the time you joined the Troupe, the Wyrm had already begun his crusade against her. I thought it best not to introduce her to more strangers.” 

Grimm’s fingers work against the fabric of one of his pillows. “But she knew of you. She encouraged me to…” 

The silence scalds.

“It doesn’t matter,” Grimm decides. He shakes his head slowly. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“Grimm,” Brumm says. His mouth is ill-suited to the name. Even Grimm’s ragged voice wears it better than Brumm’s. “I’m sorry.”

“Brumm, you—” Grimm starts, then cuts himself off with a rattling sigh. He drags his hand down his face, smearing a drop of blood from the corner of his mouth down the line of his jaw.

Brumm can only stare. Even in his treason, he’s captivated.

“You’ve put my in an awkward spot, my darling,” Grimm finally says, staring at Brumm’s hands in his fur instead of at his face. “I won’t die. I leave myself enough time to try again if the Ritual fails.”

Grimm’s fingers twist together, his gaze dropping even lower; to Brumm’s legs almost touching his own. “It has failed before. But never like this.”

Brumm tugs so hard at his fur that he feels some of it come free. “I am sorry.”

“You are not sorry!” Grimm snaps, too loud and too sharp. He manages to cover his mouth just before his whole chest heaves in a wretching, gagging cough. 

His fingers are slick with blood when he drops his hand again. “You made your choice; I’ll not have you regret it.”

 _Regret is too small a word_ , Brumm thinks, but no words come out when he tries to speak. Only the tears he’d been fighting, hot behind his mask.

Grimm reaches out. His hands hesitate, for a moment, as if he intends to take off Brumm’s mask, then settle on top of it. “My sweet musician,” he murmurs, his voice sticky and strange again. “I wish you hadn’t done this.”

Brumm barely dares to breathe. Grimm cups Brumm’s face in his hands, brushing his thumbs across his cheeks, as though he can wipe away Brumm’s tears through the mask.

“I wish you hadn’t done this,” Grimm begins again. He’s close enough that Brumm can feel the heat of his breath on each word. “For all that this place haunts me, For all that I would not burn another mark into my Soul’s broken land, for all that—”

Grimm’s voice breaks.

“For all that I do not want to see her die at my summoner’s nail,” Grimm whispers. “Being spared that pain is not worth the loss of you.”

“I want to stay,” Brumm chokes. He isn’t sure how the words make it out. He feels as though his throat is too full to speak.

Grimm laughs, soft and terrible, the way he did the first time he told Brumm the truth about the Grimmchild. He presses his forehead to Brumm’s. “I know, my dear. I wish I could let you. But you broke the contract. You put yourself before the Heart.”

“I put _you_ before the Heart!” Brumm snaps, surprising them both with the force of it. “Do you not see that you’re enslaved?”

“If it were simple, my love,” Grimm says, “I would have stopped a long time ago. The Heart gives me life. I would die without the Ritual. I risk death by delaying it.”

Shaking with the boldness of it, Brumm takes Grimm’s hands. They’re tacky with blood, and warm, but Brumm holds on anyway. “Mrrm. Your love?”

Grimm’s mouth curls into a smile that isn’t really a smile; more a baring of fangs. “You won’t remember this anyway.”

Brumm’s heart shatters like glass—shards everywhere, slivers spread across the ground. There’s nowhere he can move without piercing himself on the remains.

“Is that not cruel?” Brumm asks.

Grimm squeezes his hands. “It’s safe. And it’s better this way. For both of us.” He swallows, hard. “No temptation.”

“Can I keep something, Master?” Brumm asks, low and careful.

He expects Grimm to deny him, but instead his face smooths over in contemplation, before cracking into a sad smile.

“Of course,” Grimm says, the smooth surety of his voice ruined by the rasping remains of his coughing. “It’s only fair.”

Brumm flinches when Grimm takes the mask from his face. Grimm has seen him unmasked since Brumm joined the troupe, but it still feels… improper.

As Brumm watches, the mask shrinks down, a border of red fur fluttering out from the edges.

Grimm hands him the charm of himself, folding Brumm’s fingers over it.

“Your accordion, as well,” Grimm says, gaze dropping. “It will be with you when you wake.”

“I’m sorry,” Brumm says. His vision is going dark. “I’m sorry.”

Grimm shakes his head. “No. You chose. Do not be sorry for that. You exercised power. That’s all I ever wanted for you, my love.” Grimm’s voice comes apart at the seams, like old fabric. He presses a kiss to Brumm’s cheek, lingering there until the warmth sinks in. “I wanted you to choose.”

 _I love you,_ Brumm wants to say. _I love you, you saved me, please be safe, I’m sorry—_

but there isn’t any time. He steps backward into fog, and the warmth is gone. The cold presses in, down to his soul, stripping _something_ away that he reaches for and can’t catch hold of. It flutters free of his fingers, just out of sight in the fog and the dark.

He opens his eyes. They’re sticky and aching, like he’s been crying.

He… doesn’t know why he’d be crying. He doesn’t even know who he is.

He tries to speak. To call out, maybe, but all that comes out is a soft churring sound. _Nmmm._

He tries again. _Nymmm._ It vibrates soothingly in his chest, fills up something hollow there.

Nymm.

Maybe that’s who he is.

Nymm.


End file.
